Israel prepares to send in the tanks

Israel appears poised to extend its week-long assault on Gaza by launching a ground assault, amid renewed reports last night that troops and armour were preparing to move into the besieged Palestinian territory.

As more than 300 foreign passport holders were allowed to leave Gaza after the border was temporarily opened, Israeli officials warned that a ground offensive was needed to break the military power of Hamas, which has continued to carry out rocket attacks despite pulverising air strikes.

Tank and troop reinforcements have continued to build up along the edges of the Gaza Strip with soldiers saying they are waiting for orders to go in. Israeli sources, however, stated that commando raids and temporary occupation of strategic locations were the options being considered rather than a full-scale invasion, which would involve attritional fighting in the narrow alleyways of Gaza – home to an estimated 15,000 Hamas fighters.

There have been extensive reports in the local media of Israel carrying out a land operation which had been delayed by bad weather for much of the week. However, although the Israeli government had repeatedly warned that it may launch an offensive it remained unclear whether a final decision had been taken.

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, speaking publicly for the first time since Operation Cast Lead was launched, said she had no plans to travel to the region "at this point" to broker a ceasefire, increasing speculation that the Bush administration may be expecting a ground offensive after Israel rejected an EU-backed French proposal for a 48-hour truce earlier in the week. Ms Rice stressed that she was in touch with Israeli and European leaders on securing a ceasefire “as soon as possible”.

In his first comment on the crisis, the US President, George Bush, branded the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel an “act of terror” and said no peace deal would be acceptable without monitoring to halt the flow of smuggled weapons to terrorist groups.

A White House spokesman appeared to give tacit backing to Israeli military tactics by refusing to answer questions on whether the United States believed a ground offensive was justifiable. "Those will be decisions made by the Israelis," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

"Any actions they take in this overall operation that they are involved in right now need to avoid civilian casualties, and we also need to continue the flow of humanitarian goods into Gaza," he said.

Asked why Ms Rice was not going to the region, Mr Johndroe said that she had been working the phones constantly since the Israelis first struck Gaza a week ago, and there was no "particular need" for her to travel to the region now "since she can do the work from here".

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets yesterday after Hamas called for a "day of wrath" in response to the attacks on Gaza. The demonstrations in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, during which there were clashes between stone-throwing youths and police, was one of many across the Muslim world as the conflict reached its seventh day.

Riot police in Jordan fired tear gas to stop a march on the Israeli embassy, while in Istanbul thousands of Turks burned Israeli flags after main Friday prayers. The Egyptian authorities deployed thousands of riot police to prevent demonstrations in Cairo and the Islamist opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, said many people had been arrested.

There was further bombing in Gaza in which six people, including three children, were reported to have been killed, bringing the number of deaths to more than 400. A mosque, which the Israeli military said had been used to store weapons, was bombed and more than 20 homes belonging to the leadership of Hamas and other Islamist groups were destroyed in air strikes.

More than 30 rockets were fired into Israel yesterday, with four people injured in strikes on homes in the coastal city of Ashkelon.

Palestinians with foreign passports who were allowed into Israel – mostly women with Palestinian husbands and their children – gave dramatic accounts of the impact of the Israeli bombardment as Israel continued to bar journalists from Gaza.

Jawaher Haggi, a 14-year-old Palestinian American, said her uncle was killed during an air strike when he went out to collect medicine for her father who was dying from cancer. Her father died a few days later. "There is no water, no electricity, no medicine," she said. "It's hard to survive. Gaza is destroyed," she said. Ms Rice stressed that she was in touch with Israeli and European leaders on securing a truce "as soon as possible".